Whitney Houston R.I.P.

Yeah, I'd heard she sang fairly well Friday night, seemed like she was continuing uphill--so this is fairly startling, disheartening if not a shockah. Whether she was sober, and something like a long-damaged metabolism finally running all the way down, or toasting Friday night's recent little victory, with one last rock too many: "Memories, they hang you up and hold you."

At the Beverly Hilton on Friday, Alicia Keys was getting ready to rehearse. Monica and Brandy will also hit the stage. Vintage clips of the annual event played on the big screen, showing performances from Houston, Lou Reed, Rod Stewart, Aretha Franklin and Usher.

Houston isn't on the performance list, but that could change.

"It's her favorite night of the year ... (so) who knows by the end of the evening," said Davis, who founded Arista Records and is now the chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment.

yeah that moment of "it's not right but it's okay" being released was sort of a revelation--i fucking love that song.

my sister somehow didn't know about her drug problems and she was sort of shocked that whitney houston had extensive enough drug problems that they might conceivably have caused her to die at 48. she was like, "courtney love's still alive!" and i considered whether the only difference between the two in terms of their demons was that whitney houston had powerful handlers for the early portion of her career.

I remember Elvis Costello doing a Guest VJ hour on MTV when Blood & Chocolate came out. He played one of her videos, "How Will I Know" I think, and came on afterwards saying "please please please please Whitney, please can I write some songs for you? omg what a voice"

iirc there was a lot of criticism of whitney in the 80s for the sound of those first two records.. 'in living color' did a really mean sketch on her for singing pop songs and not being much of a dancer.

i wonder about that. then we got new jack whitney (those songs was great) but if you look up the shows on youtube they have her during the faster songs with all this choreography (it is kind of awkward) and not singing live. like it wasn't enough at the time that she had the most amazing voice in the world

this is depressing me so much in this way where i feel like i could just as easily have started a joke thread about it. i think i've mentioned before that the first single i ever owned was her version of i will always love you, which still feels about perfect. i listened to it last maybe about a week ago. it was a gift from my aunt who i guess passed the black sheep mantle to me sometime during the course of my teenage years. i still own that cassette but i've lost the cover. it still feels like we were making some sort of pact. i guess i have this thing with whitney where i've kindof loved her music in this weirdly personal way, thinking about it almost feels autobiographical. but her voice was so clean, and her singing so efficient and capable. and i feel like a big part of her later narrative was how the messiness of her life gradually encroached on that voice. i find it hard to draw the line with her, where one thing starts and another ends. that career comeback with wyclef. her being the absolute opposite of lauren hill. the clean lines of her voice, dancing in a blackout. and all the things people will say about her being "troubled". and bobby brown. and the absurdity of it. and bittersweet memories, that is all i'm taking with me. RIP.

Yeah, it was either then or another occasion when Costello wondered why she was doing "The Greatest Love": "That's for when you're 37 and living in Vegas", approximately. So maybe getting disgusted, then apathetic with the biz so young made her more likely to compensate (yes, I'm auditioning for Nancy Grace)